Gadgetopia

O’Reilly Network Safari Bookshelf: This is part of Safari Online, of which I’m a member and big fan.

Sometimes you just can’t wait for the book. When you need to learn a new technology right now, turn to the Rough Cuts service from Safari Books Online. You’ll get early access to books on cutting-edge technologies-you can literally read them as they’re being written.

It’s essentially a look into the “beta” versions of books. The authors of “Agile Development with Rails” did this with their book — I paid a fee for the pre-production PDF, and got the actual book when it shipped. They did this to pre-sell copies, but they ended up getting over 100 corrections from readers.

Look at these titles:

• Flickr Hacks
• Ajax Hacks
• Ruby Cookbook
• Ruby on Rails: Up and Running

This very well may be the future of technical book publishing. Beta periods are a good thing.